The next leg of the ride was through the state of Gujarat. Riding through this state was a transit to get to Maharastra. We broke the journey into a two-day ride-through – Udaipur to Baroda on the first and Baroda to Dadra on the next.

We rode out of Udaipur as the sun rose and got out of the city before the traffic built up. As we crossed the borders of Rajasthan we were leaving behind a treasure trove of history but weren’t leaving without some wonderful experiences. A week of riding through Rajasthan felt like a recce and we decided we would come back to do a longer stint to do justice to what it has to offer.

We rode through Gujarat, with very brief stops for food and water at times. We rode through areas that seemed like protected forest reserves and reached Godhra by noon. The heat was relentless and Abhi wanted to rest for a bit.  Just about then we found a nice clean bus shelter, where Abhi took a power nap while kept an eye on the bike while reading a book.

Champaner is about 50 kms from Baroda and rose to some fame because of the movie Lagaan. It also is a UNESCO world heritage site. We briefly visited the Jama Masjid at Champaner situated at the foothills of Pavagadh hills. It was pretty crowded when we got there, seemed like a fair/festival was on. The Masjid itself was not open to public, but we spent enough time to take some quick pictures.

Soon we reached a toll booth, and as with every toll booth in the country, we assumed that we could ride through. But we were stopped and asked to pay, probably because of KA registration. We said we would, if they can give us a receipt. And then we heard them speak to one another saying “Army ka bike lagta hai, jane do” (Seems like an Army bike, let them go). What worked for us was the buff  with army camo prints that Abhi was wearing, the boxes on the bike, which are real army radio equipment boxes converted to hold our luggage and most importantly an Indian Army post just 100 meters from the toll booth 🙂

We checked into Ginger in Baroda, we were the only dirty bikers there, probably made the staff and the rest of the corporate world at the hotel wonder which planet we landed from 😀 Freshened up, had some coffee at the Cafe Coffee Day. It was the last day of Dusshera, and we were in the land of Garbha and Dandiya. So we headed out to see if we could catch some glimpses of them. We did see a lot of pendals being put up but people still hadn’t come in.  We asked around only to find out dandiya would start only after 10 PM. Abhi was very interested to return but I wasn’t about to lose my sleep and decided to stay back. Eventually, a certain video game parlour took more precedence over dandiya 😛

As we crashed for the night, little did we know that the next day would be a beginning to a quite a challenging next few days!